Google is reportedly the target of an antitrust investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, with requests for information expected to be handed to the search giant within days.

The Wall Street Journalreported Thursday that any investigation will likely focus on Google's search and advertising business, the foundation of the company. At issue, according to the paper, is whether Google uses those services to keep users on its own Web sites, instead of sending them elsewhere on the Web.

The requests for information could arrive about the same timeframe as another request. The Senate has asked either Larry Page or Sergey Brin to testify on search competition, even going so far as to consider a subpoena.

A Google spokeswoman told PCMag.com earlier "we're in talks with the Subcommittee, and we'll send them the executive who can best answer their questions." Google representatives declined to comment on the reports of an FTC investigation.

To date, much of the investigation into Google's search practices has been centered in Europe, where the EU opened an investigation into Google's search practices last November. Three companies - Foundem, a French legal search engine called ejustice.fr, and Ciao! from Bing, levied complaints against Google. EJustice's parent, 1PlusV, added its own complaint in February. Google executives had dismissed the complaints as ones driven by Microsoft, a competitor.

However, the EU investigation was oriented around the way in which Google ranks third-party Web sites, not the way which Google directs consumers via its search results. A complaint could cover both practices, however.

Google controls a dominant position in the search market, and its collection of Web sites often makes it the top destination for Web surfers. This month, Google sites raked in more than a billion unique visitors in the month of May, the first time an Internet company has reached that milestone, according to comScore data. Microsoft finished second.

Antitrust law focuses on not whether a company has achieved a monopoly, but whether it abuses that monopoly to create monopolies in other markets. Defining what or what is not a market can be the linchpin of the investigation. The FTC's investigation, if it occurs, would be the first step in a process that could end with a formal lawsuit.

In late 2009, Adam Raff, the founder of Foundem, authored an editorial for The New York Times in which he called for "search neutrality," the principle that "search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance." His site, Foundem, had been ranked so low that it had essentially been "disappeared" from the Web for three years, he wrote.

FairSearch, an organization that includes Foundem, Microsoft, TripAdvisor, Travelocity, Hotwire, Expedia, and others, said in a statement Thursday that they were "encouraged" by the news.

"Google engages in anti-competitive behavior across many vertical categories of search that harms consumers by restricting the ability of other companies to compete to put the best products and services in front of Internet users, who should be allowed to pick winners and losers online, not Google," FairSearch wrote. "The result of Google's anti-competitive practices is to curb innovation and investment in new technologies by other companies."

Practices that Google allegedly engages in include scraping and using other companies' content without their permission, deceptive display of search results, manipulation of search results to favor Google's products, and the acquisition of competitive threats to Google's dominance, FairSearch wrote.

Mark Hachman Mark joined ExtremeTech in 2001 as the news editor, after rival CMP/United Media decided at the time that online news did not make sense in the new millennium.
Mark stumbled into his career after discovering that writing the great American novel did not pay a monthly salary, and that his other possible career choice, physics, required a degree of mathematical prowess that he sorely lacked.
Mark talked his way into a freelance assignment at CMP’s Electronic Buyers’ News, in 1995, where he wrote the...
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